Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216) (6 page)

Slocum chanced a look over the edge. It was an easy shot. He had been a sniper during the war and could have shot everyone below before they knew there was a problem. Craning his neck a mite put strain on his injured rib, but he thought he found another spot in the rocks along the canyon wall where another sniper could have as easily covered Terence and the others. It didn't take a tactical genius to position those snipers, but it did show some intent.

The killers had scouted the camp before attacking.

He rose, getting his knees under him, wary of silhouetting himself against lighter rock. Studying the terrain around the camp revealed only Mirabelle going about her useless chores, trying to look busy and not apprehensive. The set to her shoulders told him she would crack under the strain soon enough. He considered the light breeze from the canyon mouth and found several places where someone watching them in camp might hide.

Two of the dark spots proved too shallow but a third was deeper in the side of the canyon, perhaps a cave. He let his eyes adjust to the growing dark as he stared intently at the spot, then moved his head slightly and used a trick he had learned when riding herd. He saw better from the corner of his eyes at night than he did peering straight ahead.

It worked for him this time, too.

Movement. Not much but more than any of the scrubby brush around being nudged by the evening wind. Then he caught sight of a man stepping from the deepest shadows. Slocum couldn't make out the man's features, but he was short, hunched over, and carried a rifle. The dark figure drew the rifle to his shoulder and aimed downward, into camp, at Mirabelle.

That was good enough for Slocum to act. He drew his six-gun and fired. The bright flare of the bullet ricocheting off the canyon wall just below the man's feet sent him scurrying away. Before Slocum could fire again, the man vanished into the night.

6

“John! John! Are you all right!” Mirabelle's frantic question echoed up from below.

“Get down,” he shouted. “Don't give him a good shot.”

“Who? Is there someone out there?”

“Down!” he roared as he swung his legs over the side of the rounded boulder and slid. He knew what would happen when he hit the ground fifteen feet below.

The shock went up his legs and centered in his injured rib. He almost blacked out as pain hammered at his senses. He gasped, went to one knee, and clutched his side. Through the red haze threatening to make him pass out, he stumbled forward, got his arms around the woman, and used his falling weight to pull her down.

They crashed to the ground in a heap. Slocum was too stunned to keep her from wiggling away and sitting up. They were both covered in mud and ice. The cold worked its way into his bones and helped some to deaden the pain in his side. But not enough.

“You're injured. Did someone shoot you while you were up there?”

“Sniper,” he grated out, rolling onto his back. “I did all the shooting. He ran off, into the canyon.”

“Toward the gold!”

“He wouldn't bother shooting at us,” Slocum said, consciously lying since the sniper had been sighting on Mirabelle alone, “if he already had the gold. He'd hightail it out to California, where nobody'd ask questions about why he had a crate full of gold coins.”

“You opened the wound in your side. I see blood oozing through your vest.” She pushed back his coat and gentle fingers probed.

As carefully as she explored his wound, the light touch made him wince and almost cry out.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Yeah,” was all he could say. Slocum lay there, gathering his strength and fighting waves of white-hot agony piercing his chest.

He finally conquered the pain enough to sit up.

“I'm going after him,” he said.

“But you're injured! You can't hope to fight him.”

“He might be one of the gang left to spy on the camp, to see if anyone else would come back. There wasn't enough equipment and supplies for more than one or two unaccounted-for men, so they wouldn't expect to face very many. But now they know you're still alive.”

Even as he spoke, he wondered why the dry gulcher had tried to shoot Mirabelle if that were true. They had tortured before to find the location of the gold. Taking her captive would give them the chance to find the location now that the others were dead.

Dead and buried. Slocum got to his feet, aware that he had fallen on top of the mass grave. Nobody under the ground cared, but it gave him an uneasy feeling walking on the grave site.

“I'll go with you, John. You're in no condition to hunt down that man alone!”

He considered all the things he could do—and what wasn't possible.

“You ought to go back to town. Hitch up the horse and return tonight.”

“No.”

Letting her drive in the dark was chancy. The road was in terrible shape, though dropping temperatures would cause the mud to freeze and likely prevent her from getting stuck in the light buggy. That seemed a better idea than having her tag along as he followed the sniper's trail.

He stood straighter and felt light-headed.

“I'll take the horse,” he said. “You'll have to stay here. Will you be all right with that?”

It wasn't a good solution but avoided having to protect her if—when—he caught up with the ambusher.

“There are plenty of blankets from camp,” she said in a dull voice. “Can I make a fire?”

He started to say no, then decided there wasn't any reason for her to freeze if he was chasing down the spy. It would take someone as good as an Indian scout to get past him, even in the dark. Still, he wasn't fully recovered and sudden movement sent knives of pain into him, dulling his senses.

“Go on, light a fire,” he said. He moved closer and took Mirabelle in his arms.

He wasn't sure what he intended, but it ended up in a kiss that didn't satisfy either of them. With that, he got his horse, took the reins in hand, and jumped on bareback. The horse protested a moment, then settled down, resigned to walking through the dark canyon with a rider weighing it down.

Slocum cast a single glance back. Mirabelle hadn't laid a fire but huddled under blankets at the edge of camp near Ike's grave. A momentary pang for her passed. Slocum concentrated on the man running ahead of him in the canyon.

Listening hard failed to reveal any hoofbeats. He thought the man was on foot, which struck him as odd, but he might have left his horse some distance away, intending to potshot both Mirabelle and Slocum before fetching it. Following tracks in the dark was impossible, even if Slocum could have made out boot prints in the snow and dirt. The canyon began to meander, and only when it branched did he hesitate.

He had no trouble finding the trail. Deep depressions in the snow coming from the canyon branching to his left showed the man had hiked out and then retreated this way. He rode slowly, taking in what details he could. The canyon walls fell away as the bottom widened. Come spring there would be runoff feeding a small stream at his right. Now all that showed was ice turned shiny by the bright starlight. Without clouds, it would get mighty cold fast.

Shivering, he pulled up his collar and hunched over. His horse didn't much like the dropping temperature either, but if they kept moving, they'd both be all right.

Now and then he slowed and even stopped to be sure he wasn't following an animal's paw prints. The trail hadn't been hidden, and this worried him. Looking up to the rocky walls, he saw nothing but shadows cast by overhangs and possible caves. The sniper could be in any of them waiting for the single shot that would take Slocum's life. When the tracks began angling away from the bottom of the canyon toward the distant wall to the left, Slocum turned even warier.

He dismounted and led his horse, even knowing it afforded a better target than he did. Letting it go free or tethering it while he explored wasn't a good idea. He might need the horse to take him out if he ran into a well-aimed bullet.

The fitful wind could not hide the metallic sound of a rifle chambering a round. Slocum moved fast, tugging his horse toward a tumble of rocks. Just as he got the horse to safety, the shot came. The slug tore through the air, too high. The second shot was no better than the first. Slocum drew his Colt, took a deep breath of the frigid air, and then slipped around the rock, keeping in deep shadow the best he could.

More rifle fire betrayed the dry gulcher's position. The bright lances of yellow-orange muzzle flash let him home in like a hawk spotting a kangaroo rat in the desert. When he got to a spot that had to be a dozen feet under where the rifleman lay, he braced his pistol butt against the rock and yelled, “Down here! I'm below you!”

He hadn't expected the trick to work, but it did. The sniper peered over the edge of the rock. Slocum squeezed back on the trigger. The six-shooter bucked once. He heard nothing from above, but he didn't have to. A drop of blood had rained down on him as a testament to his accuracy.

Over the years, he had developed a sense of when he hit his target and when he missed. Taken with the bloody evidence trickling faster down the rock with this sense of rightness, he knew he had sorely wounded the man above him.

Cornered rats fought harder, so he edged along the boulder until he found a way up through the rocks. He had been right to be cautious. As he squeezed between two rocks onto the flat space where the sniper lay, the man rolled onto his side and fired again.

His rifle's report and the one from Slocum's six-gun mingled. A few yards away the sounds would come as one. But being only a couple yards apart, Slocum heard his less powerful one an instant before the rifle. The sniper jerked again and then slid away, his body following the river of blood to the ground below the boulder where Slocum had first attacked.

He stood there a moment, letting the ringing die in his ears. Not sure if he had been shot again, he ran quick hands over himself. The pain in his side came from the earlier wound and not a new one. Squeezing back through the narrow gap between the rocks, he retraced his way to the canyon floor. He kept his six-shooter on the man's dark form although he saw the rifle lying some distance away.

Hideout guns weren't unusual, but his sense again spoke to him. He had killed the man.

Using the toe of his boot, he rolled the man over. Dead. Slocum dropped to his knee and saw that his first shot had taken the man in the throat. The killing shot had drilled through his heart, more by accident than good marksmanship in the dark.

He stood and looked back up the hill in the direction of the canyon wall. The man had come from this spot and had returned. There had to be something around the area that would give Slocum a clue as to the others who had killed Mirabelle's husband and the rest. Picking up the fallen rifle, he examined it. He frowned. The mechanism was rusty. It was a small miracle that it hadn't blown up in the sniper's hands.

Slocum turned uphill and began climbing, following the footprints in the snow and soft dirt. Where the trail crossed rocky patches, the mud from the dead man's boots marked the path as surely as if signs had been put up. The trail opened into a level area. On the mountainside he made out tailings spilling from the mouth of a mine.

There didn't seem to be any other mining activity in the area. Slocum continued following the tracks to a spot where he saw a line shack hidden away in a stand of scrubby trees. The vegetation and side of the mountain would protect the ramshackle building from the worst of the winter storms and in the summer might be cooler than if it had been built out in plain sight.

He shook his head at this. It hardly seemed likely the killer lived here, much less worked a claim. Slocum got the sinking feeling the man he had killed wasn't one of those responsible for the deaths back at the canyon mouth.

Using the rifle barrel, he poked the door, which opened on well-oiled hinges. Inside the dark shack he saw two pallets, one on either side of the room. Between them a Franklin stove pumped out waves of heat. Someone had fed the stove recently. He backed away and looked toward the mine shaft. Faint sounds of digging came out.

Slocum went to the mine and chanced a quick look in. Deep within guttered a single miner's candle. It didn't cast enough light for him to see anything other than rusted tracks for an ore cart and dancing shadows.

“Hello!” His call echoed into the mine and was eventually swallowed by distance.

“Ain't no reason to shout,” came the gravelly voice from behind.

Slocum didn't spin around because the prickly feeling at the back of his neck warned him a gun was trained on him. He slowly put down the rusty rifle and kept his hands where they could be seen.

“This your claim?”

“Is. My partner's, too, but he's a lazy good-for-nothing. Not sure where he got off to.”

“He tried to shoot me,” Slocum said. He turned slowly until he faced a man dressed in canvas pants and a plaid wool shirt. The man wore a strap around his forehead holding an unlit carbide lamp.

“Ain't got money fer the carbide pellets,” the man answered Slocum's unspoken question. “Ain't gettin' 'nuf outta this here hole in the ground to stay alive, but me and Bertram do what we can.”

It wasn't the smartest thing to do when he looked down the barrel of an old black powder Remington, but Slocum repeated that he had shot the man's partner.

“You kill the son of a bitch?” The heavy pistol never wavered in the miner's grimy paw.

“It was him or me.” That wasn't strictly the truth since Slocum could have avoided gunning down Bertram by not pursuing him. Giving more details to justify the killing didn't seem right.

“Never had the sense God gave a goose. Where'd this happen?”

“Not two hundred yards downslope,” Slocum said. “You didn't hear the gunshots?”

“Was in the mine. Had to come out to take a leak.” The pistol never left dead center of Slocum's chest.

He began estimating his chances of feinting in one direction, diving in the other, drawing and firing before a hunk of shot tore through his chest. It didn't look good. The miner was like a statue, unwavering and not shaking even a fraction.

“I didn't mean to kill him, but—”

“But you didn't have a choice. Bertram always was a hotheaded fool.”

“Glad you understand.”

“You ain't thinkin' to jump the claim?”

“It's yours by right,” Slocum said. “All of it, unless Bertram willed it to next of kin.”

“Kin? He don't have no kin, leastways none that'd admit to it.”

“You mind pointing that gun somewhere else?”

“This old thing? Hell, it ain't even loaded. I use it to drive spikes in the mine since my hammer broke.”

Slocum reflected on how isolation had turned the miner crazy as a loon. That wasn't the kind of admission to make to a man who had just killed your partner and might be interested in stealing whatever gold came from the mine.

“You hear any gunfire a few nights back?”

“Two nights back, yeah, might have. From way off, though. There's folks always pokin' about in these hills.”

“Prospectors?”

“Ain't that honest. There's a legend 'bout some damned fool bank robbers hidin' their haul around here. Don't mean nuthin', just a tall tale. Or it might be. Cain't seem to remember 'xactly.”

Slocum touched the two coins in his vest pocket. There wasn't anything to tell him Isaac Comstock had found the hidden gold. Others hunting for the robbers' booty might have dropped them. Or some swindler might have salted the area to sell treasure maps or lead a party into the hills to kill them.

The gold coins could have ended up in Comstock's possession in all manner of ways, and with him dead, there was no way to know the truth. All Slocum had to go on was what a grieving widow claimed.